11/10 - Tour of Six Banyan Trees Temple

Amelia is much better today, thank goodness! The exursion is supposed to be relatively short, and Amelia really wanted to go, so we packed everyone up after breakfast and headed out. Getting off the bus we saw several beggers with missing or deformed limbs (we do not see beggers on Shamian Island where we're staying). The temple was quite beautiful and Amelia was being cute. When entering the worship area she saw what the Buddhists did (bowing etc) and mimicked them.

We had Emme blessed by a Buddhist monk (as were several of the other babies) and Michael and Amelia headed to the top of the temple while I fed Emme. She is good as usual, but seems a bit sleepy today.

Afterwards we headed to a Porcelain and Jade factory store where we made some unique finds.

Later that afternoon, I joined a few other ladies in getting a massage. I thought of my sister Thalia. She believes massages should invoke some level of pain to be productive, well it did that alright. She did a good job, but wow, she did inflict some pain in the process. The massage including tip was around $10.

Michael had the girls and braved himself to the laundry. He thinks Emme was sad while I was gone. I'd like to believe that's true, but I came to realize she was just a bit sad all day. I'm not sure whether it's related to her teething or if she misses her favorite nanny.

We headed off for dinner looking for a new place to eat. We walked to a restaurant which was decent, but had few other patrons and felt a bit too nice with two kids. Michael had ordered chicken, but began to have some doubts about it when he didn't recognize some of the bones. I told him not to think too much about it. If it tastes good..... On the walk back we found a place bustling with Chinese patrons. Fish swam in little pools outside waiting for their number to be called. Crabs and frogs waited in cages. I asked Amelia if she would eat a frog. She said "Yes, frog legs!". I checked out the menu and nothing was in English, but they had pictures of dishes, so I think we'll try to convince the Kings' to join us one night on this culinary adventure so we can order more types of dishes and enjoy them "family style". One of my favorite ways to eat and typical of Chinese dining.

Emme had a hard time falling asleep. We've been rocking her to sleep every night, but she just kept fighting sleep and crying in her sad quite little cry. Her face looks like she's crying but only a small sound comes out. Poor little thing. Michael walked her up and down the halls outside our room for a good while until she fell asleep. She woke up as soon as she made it in to the crib, so I rocked and held her some more until I was able to put her down. This was about 9pm. She's still sleeping and it's about 7:30am on Saturday. I hope she'll feel more like herself today as we head off to the YunTai gardens. I better wake the family, it's getting late!